I will now state the obvious: My kids are awesome.

I know; everyone says that about their kids. We’re supposed to say that, for one, and even more, there is a biological imperative that commands us to look at our offspring and value them above all others. I understand that I am genetically programmed to think of them first, think of them often, and think highly of them.

And all four of them are, in my book, uniquely terrific. I am certain I will find occasion to bore you about them all in the near future. (That’s a promise, not a threat.) 

But today I want to talk about my daughters and how I am not proud of them.

Some full disclosure: Mom, Interrupted, really did interrupt her life some seventeen years ago, when she interrupted her first marriage. ‘Interrupted,’ as in ‘canceled,’ as in ‘divorced.’

And when I interrupted my life I interrupted my two young daughters’ lives, as well.

That last fact has caused me no end of pain and guilt throughout the years. I wasn’t leaving an abusive situation. I could have stuck it out. My ex-husband is really a very good guy. Time has shown, though, that I wasn’t nearly the right person for him (as evidenced by his longtime marriage to the lovely woman who is, evidently, absolutely the right person). I have remarried as well, to a person who is most certainly my lobster, in every sense of the word.

The ex and I have worked very hard to provide a good environment for the girls, which was easy to do, because he’s an excellent person to be divorced from, which in this day is actually a valuable skillset. I hope he can say the same thing about me. (C’mon, admit it: how many disasters of an ex-spouse do you  know, full of the drama and the pain and the scorched earth?) We fully shared custody, which meant that the girls spent one week at my house, one week at his, for about fifteen years. We did everything we could to make the situation as easy as possible on them, and worked hard (and successfully, I might add) to partner well in raising them. We spent parts of holidays together. We attended school functions together. We talked to teachers together. We coordinated punishments. We coordinated gifts.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people, and not always even people I know, will volunteer to me that I have screwed up these girls beyond all hope with all my selfish behavior. And it’s true, I’m kinda surprised Laura Schlessinger hasn’t shown up and beaten me to death for everything I’ve done, even before the divorce:

– didn’t breastfeed near long enough. Maybe three or four months. It’s hard to say; the whole time is just a gigantic poop-smeared blur. But I famously quit breastfeeding one of  the two because I looked down at her one day and I swear to God she looked just like Ernest Borgnine and I just couldn’t do it anymore.

– worked outside the home even when I was married to their dad. They weren’t even watched by family. No, I plopped them into The Heart of Darkness itself: organized daycare. (Note: I don’t think it’s The Heart of Darkness. But you’d be gobsmacked to know how many people think it is.)

– I vaccinated. I didn’t even research it first. Just handed ’em over  and let them be turned into gigantic petri dish pincushions.(in all fairness, this was a few years before vaccinations became controversial.)

– And then, of course, The Divorce and The Broken Home and The Shared Custody. Worse still, I then provided a step-father and new, little brothers. On their dad’s side, they ultimately wound up with three step-brothers. (According to the pundits, I should have remained unmarried and not confused their world even further until they were grown and gone.)

True Story: At a now-long-distant Thanksgiving gathering a relative famously and quite candidly told me that I had messed those girls’ lives up beyond redemption with all of the above, especially the divorce.

But no! I protested. Look at how well they do in school! All A’s! Active in sports! Sociable, smart, and astonishingly mature for their age!

Smart Ass Relative popped an olive into his mouth, grinned, and said, “You have to tell yourself that so you can live with what you’ve done.”

I went after him with a fork.

I will fast forward you now to the spring of 2008. At this moment in time, my oldest daughter is graduating from high school. She has cut a wide swath through her adolescence:

– she was academically number one in her class from the moment she put down her pencil at the entrance exam. This has earned her the role of valedictorian.

– she has not only an academic letter but an athletic letter, having boldly tried out for swimming, tennis, and soccer and gamely battled her way onto the varsity.

– she is president of the student body.

– she has been selected her school’s equivalent of Female Student of the Year.

– her progress has been closely watched by Ernest Borgnine her younger sister, who will graduate third in her class the next year, with a scholarship opportunity that will be unmatched by any of her own peers.

We watched Lane give her speech. She loves (or at least appears to love) public speaking and handles it fabulously. As she leaves the stage, the parent sitting next to me whispers, “You must be so proud.”

I am many adjectives, sitting in that auditorium at precisely that moment. I’m so happy that all her hard work paid off. I’m amazed that those two incredibly focused, pretty, intelligent, charming girls are related to me and share my DNA. I’m humbled at their accomplishments, which far outstrip anything I ever produced at this point in my own unfocused, party-centric youth. I’m grateful for a universe that enables me to say, “I’m Lane and Abby’s mom!” I’m even confident after sharing bathrooms with them that their combined s**t doesn’t even stink. (Mom, those asterisks are for you. Happy now?)

But I’m not proud of them. I can’t be. I hope that they are proud of themselves for all they’ve accomplished, because they deserve it and have earned it. But I didn’t get those good grades, or play all those sports, or do all that volunteer work or pull the all-nighters. So all I can be is amazed, and grateful, and happy. 

According to everything conventional wisdom says about parenting, everything I did was wrong. All I did right, apparently, was show up and tell them that the most important thing in life was the amount of effort they put into it.

But more than anything, that night in May, 2008, I wanted to stand up and yell to the heavens and to Dr. Laura and that relative and every stranger who through the years spoke up and told me what a lousy mother I was:

“HA! SHOWED YOU! I DIDN’T SCREW THOSE GIRLS UP EVEN HALF AS BAD AS YOU SAID I WOULD!”

Which is really all a parent can do.